Bryan Oakley 2001-11-23, wrote on c.l.t: This group is more like a school playground where the place is filled with kids who see gems when other people only see rocks, and everyone shares in the magic of a found treasure even if it's really just something a grown-up threw away. And when they find something that truly is junk it is just thrown away with a laugh, and a race to find the next cool thing :-)

There was a second usenet newsgroup titled comp.lang.tcl.announce, which was removed by the Big-8 Management Board (which controls the "official" usenet groups) in 2010 as the moderator had been uncontactable for years (see below). There is an archive at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.lang.tcl.announce. The formal removal process is detailed in the most recent thread.

Old discussion of comp.lang.tcl.announce

There is a second usenet newsgroup titled news:comp.lang.tcl.announce, which has a web forum interface at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce. This is a moderated group specializing in new Tcl related release announcments by anyone. Announcements can concern conferences, workshops, software, books, articles, etc. However, the moderator has been unavailable for quite some time, and now yahoo has even removed the archives. So someone interested in becoming the moderator should probably contact the Usenet Cabal to determine how best to proceed.

LV: I have been unsuccessful in contacting the moderator of comp.lang.tcl.announce. He has, on a regular basis, had periods of non-posting for long periods of time. So I don't know if this is a busy period for him, or if something more serious has occurred.

LV 2006-02-09: I continue to be unsuccessful in a) contacting the moderator and b) getting yahoogroups to respond to my queries about opening the tcl_announce group up to a new moderator. Anyone know the steps on usenet to declare a new moderator? And anyone know someone willing to act as moderator?

Alas, the moderator of comp.lang.tcl.announce appears to have disappeared over the past few years, and attempts, to date, to get someone to take over that task have failed.

One of the cardinal rules, though, of newsgroups is relevancy. If your posting - whatever the topic - is not relevant to Tcl and/or one of its extensions or applications, then it probably belongs elsewhere.

Keep the signal-to-noise ratio high: avoid 'lots of references/updates/etc. on a daily (or even weekly) basis.

Double, triple, quadruple-check every bit of code that will be posted. Recently, Cameron Laird wrote regarding a wish for usenet posters:

".... One of the most important things for junior programmers to learn is that top coders know how to test and automate, and expect to do both these things at all opportunities. I'm inclined to take Donal at his word, and believe that he makes no fewer errors than others, and quite possibly more. However, he's quite good at verifying his own work.

If we could somehow teach a fraction of that to incoming Usenet posters ... well, the world would be a different place."

comp.lang.tcl values professionalism. Larry Virden recently wrote in a newsgroup for some other language:

According to Martien Verbruggen <[email protected]>:
:On Thu, 04 Jan 2001 01:29:53 GMT,
: John Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
:> I see a lot of "you work stupid" and "RTFM" on this list.
:
:Mostly when it is deserved.

Treating someone poorly, regardless of their inappropriate behavior, seldom converts them to one's point of view. It creates barriers, and in all likelihood burns bridges which, one day, one may regret having burned (imagine if you will finding yourself across the hiring desk from someone that you might have treated that way...)

That being said, concise, accurate, and pointed responses are also valued, even when they sometimes seem a bit brusque.

Avoid mentioning the mentioning one or a few specific solutions in almost every posting, unless those are the only or uncontroverted best solutions.

Serious and well-considered employer announcements are currently considered acceptable, but that may change with the volume of postings. The should be clearly marked as such in the subject.

This section remains for historical purposes, and to point the way if something similar ever happens again.

LV 2007-01-11: this morning when I visit the google groups comp.lang.tcl group, I see no postings past Jan 9th. I don't recall whether I saw anything newer yesterday.

However, just wanted to give others a heads up that something might be wrong.

Same here, no updates on http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.tcl since Jan 9. Other google usenet groups I checked seem to be getting updates, and when I checked another news server from home last night it had more recent comp.lang.tcl postings - can't access that from work though Colin Macleod.

AM: 2007-01-11: There was a maintenance update the other day, but since then I have not seen any updates of the postings. (Maintenance update to what?)

2007-01-11: FWIW, the news server news.chi.sbcglobal.net has no postings since around noon central time on January 10, 2007. This, for nearly all newsgroups except sbcglobal.* (based on very limited spot checking). Very odd.

EMJ: It is annoying if your only accessible view of a newsgroup is not up-to-date, but since message propagation is inherently decentralized and asynchronous, pure randomness may be enough to explain it. And if not, local policies or problems (server or "nearby" network components) are the most likely cause. Google often seems to ignore groups for extended periods, quite possibly something to do with the way incoming messages are integrated into the Google archive.

LV: The google site appears to continue to have problems with a subset of groups for the third straight day. I'm unable to locate a free nntp server. Given that I suspect google has become the primary method of accessing comp.lang.tcl, unless something happens shortly, we may have lost that newsgroup as well.

LV 2007-01-12: Apparently someone at google groups noticed our problem with comp.lang.tcl (I know I emailed them several times about it). I am this sfternoon seeing articles appear on the newsgroup. Now if we could do something about comp.lang.tcl.announce :-( ...